Abstract
Transformation towards sustainable development is about findings new ways of thinking, organising and doing to navigate wicked challenges such as climate change and urbanisation. Such challenges call for new governance modes that match the complexity of the systems to be handled, where multi-level governance and collaborative approaches have been suggested to contribute to such transformative capacity building. This in-depth, trans-disciplinary study investigates how the multi-level governance context in Stockholm, Sweden, influences the transformative capacity from the perspective of local sustainability initiatives. It was found that even though the decentralized governance of the Stockholm region hosts a great potential in supporting city wide transformation, it is hampered by disconnect between actors, levels and sectors and the short-term funding structure. The suggested interventions highlight the tension between enabling collaborations, while safeguarding a high local diversity of initiatives and flexibility to ensure sustained space for innovation and learning.
Highlights
Today’s world is understood as consisting of nested complex systems and needing complex governance to match.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.This becomes evident in any attempt for sustainable development, which is inevitably about handling formidable challenges where social, ecological and economic complexities are intertwined across scales
The overarching aim for this study is to investigate how an urban multi-level governance (MLG) context influences the transformative capacity of a city from the perspective of local sustainability initiatives (LSIs) that can lead by private, public or civic actors
Five LSI types were identified by the different ways they relate to the governance structure
Summary
The MLG model acknowledges that multiple actors interact, and both formal power and informal power are dispersed across levels and sectors (Geels 2002; Kooiman 2003) These interactions impact the direction, as well as the execution, of decisions, such as what knowledge is used, whose interests are recognized and what actions are prioritized (Kooiman 2003). This paper deals primarily with the state and society interaction as one of the three dimensions of MLG presented by Piattoni (2009) It engages with the coordination dilemma between an increasing number of overlapping jurisdictions in sustainability governance and especially the effects of so called second order coordination costs (Hooghe and Marks 2003). These costs emerge from need of coordination among institutions aiming at coordinating human activities (ibid)
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